THE ARRIVAL OF HUCKLEBERRYIt all started after Jonathan and Tom moved from New York to Sawyerville, Alabama. I'm going to let Tom tell it as much as possible mostly cribbed from his family memoir Baker's Daughter, Miller's Son. [I've added the occasional comment in brackets.]

The movers had come to get Jonathan’s furniture on Friday, March 3, 1989
and the following day he and I flew to Alabama. Less than two weeks later and a
little over a week before I was scheduled to return to New York, a puppy
appeared in our goat pasture, putthere
by someone whoknew thepremises were now occupied and hoping we’d
give the dog a home. Which was the answer to a prayer in a way. In New York one
night after I had made the decision to eventually move to Sawyerville, I said
to Jonathan, "Do you think we can have a dog?"

On the morning of March 16 I was awakened by the sound of a puppy
crying. Later that day at lunch in Tuscaloosa I asked Jonathan’s sister if she
knew whether our neighbor across the road had a puppy. She didn’t. We got home
that evening and found the puppy happily scampering among our four goats. I had
taken cracked corn down which we fed to them as a diet supplement and which
also kept them somewhat tame, coming to expect the corn and to accept us as
their providers. I thought she was a male, but what did I know. Well, Jonathan's sister
when she saw it thought so too. There was a little puff of hair that we thought
was hiding a penis. Jonathan pooh poohed us and the veterinarian proved him right.
[Note: I know a penis when I see one, and this puppy simply didn’t have one.]
She was small, fuzzy, and white with black and brown ears and a dark patch
running down over her left eye. When I entered the goat pasture the puppy stood
tentatively between a pine tree and the adjacent fence, bashfully and
cautiously friendly.

I went running up the hill to tell Jonathan to come look. “There’s
something down here,” I said. Jonathan took
a look and said, “We’ll have to find out who she belongs to.” I knew she
belonged to us. I was ready for a dog. He wasn’t. Maybe someday but not now.The dog looked healthy, well-fed. It was not afraid of us. When we
entered the goat pasture it rubbed against my legs. The four goats were hanging
around waiting for their corn, obviously aware of the puppy but unconcerned. The
puppy had been with them all day of course and probably the night before. I recalled
hearing a puppy whining before I went to sleep.

I poured the cracked corn into the goat trough, an old water tank
split lengthwise. The goats charged to it and began eating. The puppy climbed
into it and started doing the same. I was astonished. The poor thing was so
hungry it was trying to eat corn. We found a piece of leftover chicken in the
refrigerator, chopped it up, and took it to the puppy who, although probably not
accustomed to solid food, gamely chewed and swallowed it. I was enchanted by
this little dog.Jonathan was less so. He
was not sure we were going to keep it and wouldn’t let himself get attached to
a lost puppy we probably weren’t going to keep. He still wasn’t sure that the
puppy hadn’t wandered onto the premises and that an owner wouldn’t be out
looking for it. We put out some water for the dog and went back to the house,
Jonathan to call around and start enquiries about who owned it. The puppy seemed
contented left alone with the goats. Nobody was missing a puppy. The woman who
owned the Sawyerville Country Store across the highway said she had seen the
puppy playing with the goats early that morning when she came to work.

We were both tired and went to bed early. My bedroom is at
the rear of the house. I was awakened by the sound of the puppy crying. I tried
to ignore it and get back to sleep but couldn’t.Finally I dressed to go out and check on the dog.
Jonathan’s light was on as though he were awake. [Note: probably had fallen asleep
reading, as I did from time to time in those days.] I went to the door of his
bedroom and spoke to him. He awakened with a start, disoriented. He cried out.
It took him a while to focus on what I was telling him. He told me to ignore
the puppy. I refused to. The puppy needed attention and I was going down to attend
to it whether he went or not. It was a half hour past midnight. Jonathan would
go with me, he said. He dressed, by now beginning to focus on the situation. The
dog would need a box, he said. We had plenty, left over from the move. Jonathan grabbed
a box. I grabbed a bunch of old socks of his that had been used as packing material,
not yet stored away.Bryan chopped up some more chicken, tore up a slice of wheat bread,
and poured skim milk over the mixture. We headed down the hill with a big
flashlight, box, socks, and food. The puppy heard us coming and was peeking out
at us from inside the goat shed. Friend or foe? She’d already decided. She came
waddling out, happy to greet us. She was alone in the shed. The goats
frequently spent nights when it was not raining on an old tulip tree that had been
pushed over to about a thirty degree angle by a storm the fall before.

We placed the box in a corner inside the shed, leaving room for the goats
should they want to return. We lined the box with the socks and put the puppy
in it. She immediately recognized it as home. A bed for me! They love me! I’ve
got a home! We set the saucer of food in front of the box and the dog came out
to eat it. The milk seemed especially appreciated. She ate until nothing was
left. We petted her, which seemed to please her hugely. Her little stomach
filled tight with food, she became drowsy and settled down. We put her back in
the box where she curled up and went to sleep. We walked back to the
house, not to hear another sound from her all night. Next morning Jonathan called
his sister at work and said, “The goats have adopted a dog.”

His sister came down to see next day. She and I bathed the puppy in a wash
tub and dried her thoroughly with old towels, but she completed the drying
process by rolling in grass.Jonathan was
still undetermined about keeping it. The veterinarian in Greensboro could
surely find it a home, as could the woman who was the Sawyerville rural mail
carrier. She and her husband owned a catfish farm. They routinely adopted dogs.
I wanted desperately to keep this one, however. But it would be Jonathan’s call. I
was going back to New York in a little over a week. I wouldn’t be back for
another two months. “If we do keep it, what’ll we call it?” said Jonathan. Considering
a name for the dog.This was
hopeful.Since we lived in Sawyerville,
I said, “Why don’t we call him Tom Sawyer.” (I was still thinking it a male.)Jonathan said, “No. Whenever anybody called
‘Tom’ we wouldn’t know which one of you would come running.” I liked that. I
said, “Okay, Huckleberry.” And thank you, Mark Twain. [Note: Huckleberry is a
name that could swing both ways, so it seemed suitable for a girl dog as well.
And it shortens so nicely to Huck. Yes, I was hesitant about keeping the dog,
particularly since she looked so healthy I thought she must have an owner who
would turn up. I also anticipated the time a puppy would take, the financial
cost of veterinarian care and food, and the emotional toll it would take if she
died before we did. Still, I too thought her adorable the moment I saw her, and
I knew that if no one claimed her, she would be ours.]

We’d had Huckleberry maybe five years when a young black boy meeting
Jonathan and “the girl” out walking, said, “That dog’s about five years old, isn’t
she? My mama wouldn’t let me keep her.” We’d always suspected. The boy, when
much younger, would walk past our yard with his mother on the way to the
country store. They always looked for the dog. I think they fed her cookies and
the like when we weren’t looking. Once whenHuckleberry was inthehouse, I sawtheboypeering, disappointednotto
seeher. He asked his mother, worried,
“Where is she?”We think he put herina black trash bag tobring her here, probablyafter itgotdarkonthe
night ofMarch15.Huckleberry, as a result, always had an aversion to black trash
bags.She saw one once being blown along
the road by the wind.It freaked her
out. [Note: I never pictured it this way. I think the boy carried her in his
arms.]

Okay, I'll take the floor now. Surely you cannot take a look at that adorable puppy and not realize that there was no way I could not fall madly in love with her. But she was so beautiful, and she was so plump. I did greatly fear that someone would show up to claim her. Even after Tom had left for the two months back in New York I worried. But that never happened.Before Tom left for New York, we moved an old doghouse from the yard down into the goat pasture and placed it beside the goat shed. You can see a bit of it in the photo above. Now Huck had her own house (although sometimes a goat would share it with her).

Here's a shot of Huck's house that better shows its relationship to the goat shed and to our house up the hill. During the few months that Huck lived full-time with her goat buddies the path between house and pasture gate was trod many time a day.But the girl was going to grow, and the living arrangement was going to change.